Why this Blog Exists

Monday, January 31, 2011

We've all heard tales of the occasional lone marijuana plant found growing on a median strip or leftover patch of ground here in Brooklyn, and presumably there are indoor medicinal grow operations keeping a low profile here and there about the borough.

But we never knew until now that Brooklyn was home to vast outdoor "pot plantations" in the early 1950s, growing in plain sight, with plants "as tall as Christmas trees," if the latest Brooklynology blog post at the Brooklyn Public Library can be believed.

Apparently, in the summer of 1951 alone, 17,200 pounds of the stuff was dug up and eradicated here in Brooklyn (41,000 pounds across the entire city). There was so much pot growing all over the place that special crews of sanitation workers had to be dispatched to uproot the demon weed, groves of which grew in "lush impudence" according to the Brooklyn Eagle, from which these pictures were taken.

One "marijuana plantation" in a Butler Street vacant lot yielded about 100 pounds of the plant. The cited location, at 82 Butler Street, is in the "West Slope" on the other side of the Gowanus Canal. We will be visiting soon to see if any traces are still to be found -- strictly for research purposes, of course.

In the meantime, don't miss the BPL's meticulously researched article on this fascinating subject.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Here's another new finding gleaned from the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide. The RERBG issue of April 6, 1901 carries news of plans filed by prolific Park Slope builder Louis Bonert for four 4-story, 8-family "tenements" (i.e. multi-family housing), on the south side of 3rd Street between 5th & 6th Avenues. Bonert's architect here is Thomas Bennett, who designed a great many Park Slope apartment houses from around this same time:

Louis Bonert is of course well-known to long-time readers of this blog; we suspect he built more housing in Park Slope than any other developer. We had a hunch these buildings were erected by Bonert, although we never had any concrete evidence before now. In part our suspicion was based on the unusual tripartite windows on the first floor; other examples from Bonert's buildings are found directly across the street.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Thanks to the Here's Park Slope blog for calling our attention to the half-block long Calder Place, one of those odd streets created when the Prospect Expressway was bulldozed through the South South Slope in the mid-20th century:

According to Here's Park Slope's research, the street is named for William Musgrave Calder, a prolific Park Slope builder to whom we have devoted a good deal of space on this blog.

It's not much of a street, and indeed except for the scorched-earth tactics of Robert Moses, Mr. Calder might not have a street named after him at all today. We prefer to remember him by the manybuildingsheerected in Park Slope.

Monday, January 24, 2011

...a broker with Awaye Realty in Carroll Gardens, said that with each new building the avenue’s popularity had grown. “They’re hard to get started, it’s hard to sell to the first people,” he said. “But all of a sudden, once people see other people living there, it’s pop-pop-pop, like popcorn.” -NY Times profile of the "new 4th Avenue"

4th Avenue demolition

Actually, "other people" have been living in 4th Avenue all along.

They were there before the new towers went up. They were there until their homes were demolished to make way for the new residents.

Friday, January 21, 2011

The architectural firm of Pohlman & Patrick became quite active in Park Slope around the turn of the last century.

According to the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide, in 1903 the firm designed the group of three mixed-use (flats over stores) buildings on the southwest corner of 7th Avenue and 5th Street for builder Alexander G. Calder:

Calder apparently carved off the rear 20 feet of his 7th Avenue lots, in order to squeeze in an extra lot behind them, facing 5th Street. On this lot Calder built a 4-story, 4-family apartment house, also designed by Pohlman & Patrick, also in 1903:

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

We're going off-topic with this post, since it has nothing to do either with historic preservation or with Park Slope. But, if one spends enough time in the Brooklyn Eagle, that telescope into the past, one finds some really cool stuff...

Like this 1855 advertisement for the self-published first edition of "Leaves of Grass":

Brooklyn Eagle, June 29, 1855, p. 3

A few weeks later, the Eagle published a review of this "extraordinary book":

Brooklyn Eagle, September 15, 1855, p. 2

We have a dim recollection of our American Lit professor saying that Whitman wrote anonymous (and approving) reviews of his own book. It's hard to tell because of the florid 19th-century style, but one can almost imagine that these could be Whitman's own words:

One could certainly do worse than to "loafe" a while amongst Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Monday, January 17, 2011

IMBY recently discovered an interesting RERBG article about Park Slope's 8th Avenue from 1912. The article features several photographs, including a view looking north from President Street before the tall apartment buildings were constructed on the west side of that block:

8th Avenue, view north from President Street, 1912Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide, May 18, 1912, p. 1

The buildings on the east side of 8th Avenue (right side in the photo above) are unchanged to the present day. But the buildings on the west side have been replaced by tall apartment buildings.

The RERBG article indicates that the house at the northwest corner of 8th Avenue and President Street, visible to the left in the photograph above, was originally the residence of Civil War General C. T. Christensen.

An idea of General Christensen's prominence can be gleaned from a New York Timesarticle of 1903, noting both his 5oth wedding anniversary and the marriage of Violet, one of his daughters. The article notes that General Christensen "was for many years identified prominently with the military, social, and business life of Brooklyn. He was a long time President of the Brooklyn Trust Company, and prior to that he was connected with the banking house of Drexel, Morgan, & Co.":

New York Times, March 20, 1903, p. 9

It seems that Gen. and Mrs. Christensen were blessed with many daughters. An 1889 article from the Brooklyn Eagle recounts the presentation of the Misses Laura and Hope Christensen "as candidates for the favors of society" at their home on the corner of 8th Avenue and President Street:

Below is a view of the corner today. The Park Slope Historic District's Designation Report states that the apartment house on the northwest corner of President Street and 8th Avenue was constructed in 1928, so General Christensen's house must have been pulled down not long before then:

8th Avenue and President Street, west sidePark Slope Historic District

Many of the tall apartment houses in 8th Avenue are similar "second growth" buildings, erected on soft development sites originally occupied by large mansions with spacious gardens.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

At last week's Park Slope Civic Council meeting, discussion turned to 4th Avenue's new development, and more specifically to what have come to be recognized as the missed opportunities therein.

Trustees and guests expressed the by now familiar observations about blank walls, driveways, and ventilation grates that annihilate the pedestrian experience, the lack of street-level commercial space, and the general hostility of the new buildings to street life.

Along with the above points, one of the PSCC Trustees made the astute observation that the new buildings in 4th Avenue were built on the rubble of earlier, older buildings that once stood on the same sites... and that all of the earlier housing was undoubtedly more affordable than what replaced it.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

We've focused mainly on the very late 1890s, and into the 1900s, since that's when the Brooklyn listings from the American Architect & Building News trail off. Also the online Brooklyn Eagle comes to an abrupt halt at the end of 1902.

One such find is the long row of eight 8-family apartment houses on the north side of Carroll Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. According to the RERBG, the row was constructed in 1898 by owner/architect/builder Jeremiah J. Gilligan:

This iconic Park Slope streetscape ends in a church steeple regardless of whether viewed from the east, as above, toward St. Francis Xavier Church, or from the west, as below, toward the Old First Dutch Reformed Church. The block is equally beautiful in either direction!

The buildings are highly similar, with minor variations from one to another, and highlight the growing preponderance of small apartment houses in Park Slope in the closing years of the 19th century.

709 Carroll Street

Note that the RERBG lists the developer as "John J. Gilligan", whereas a similarly named "Jeremiah J. Gilligan" is cited in the Landmarks Preservation Commission's Prospect Heights Historic District Designation Report:

We think these are one and the same person; the RERBG listing cites John J. Gilligan's address as "188 Park Place", which matches the 1897 Lain's Brooklyn Directory address for Jeremiah Gilligan:

GILLIGAN Jeremiah bldr. 188 Park pl

So we suspect a typographical or transcription error in the RERBG listing above.

The buildings are visually associated with the other two buildings on the same side of 8th Avenue, all the way to 8th Street. But we had no evidence positively associating the rest of the block with owner John Wilson or architects Pohlman or Patrick.

Until now.

Tonight's research in the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide yields plans filed in 1904 by the same owner, John Wilson, and Henry Pohlman, architect, for two more very similar apartment houses, completing the blockfront from 9th Street to 8th Street:

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

We've been scanning the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide of late, concentrating in the very early 1900s. The online Brooklyn Eagle ends at 1902, and the American Architect and Building News listings grow sparse around this same time. But the RERBG is yielding many interesting "hits" for Park Slope.

For example, we are running into a number of apartment buildings from the firm of Pohlman and Patrick, whose name also appears in the Prospect Heights Historic District Designation Report:

We thought the name "Pohlman" sounded familiar, so we checked Park Slope's Designation Report, and indeed in 1903 Henry Pohlman designed what we consider to be some of Park Slope's finest apartment houses, at Garfield Place and 8th Avenue:

Sunday, January 2, 2011

The Museum of the City of New York's recent launch of its online collection of historic photographs of New York City received considerable notice in the local blogosphere.

We scanned through the entire collection, or what was online about two weeks ago, and found almost no images from Park Slope, which was disappointing. We'll feature some of the few highlights in upcoming posts.

Some of the photographs offer rather alarming contrasts with the present.

Consider the following view of the west side of 4th Avenue, between Butler and Douglass Streets. The photograph was taken in 1936 by Berenice Abbott:

4th Avenue, west side, btwn Butler & Douglass StreetsBerenice Abbott, photographer - 1936Museum of the City of New York collection